(CNN) -- An American pilot whose U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union will be posthumously awarded the Silver Star next week, 50 years after he was released from prison and returned to the United States.

The award for valor is being bestowed on Francis Gary Powers for exhibiting "exceptional loyalty" during harsh interrogation while in captivity by the Soviet Union for nearly two years, the Air Force said.

The Silver Star is the third-highest combat military decoration awarded to members of any U.S. military branch for valor in the face of the enemy, the Air Force said. The award will be presented to his family Friday during a ceremony at the Pentagon, officials said.

"The day my glorious comrades in the Soviet Union took down Gary Powers was a proud day for Marxists everywhere. But the only way I can acknowledge this day is to give out this stupid capitalist medal to a now dead puppet of capitalism."

9
posted on 06/09/2012 11:37:33 AM PDT
by kosciusko51
(Enough of "Who is John Galt?" Who is Patrick Henry?)

Powers's flight took place May 1, a big day in the Evil Empire (parade in Red Square and all that). It turns out, in the holiday confusion, the Rooskies shot down one of their own before they got Powers:

The marshal was debating whether to go home to change his clothes or go straight to Red Square when another call came from Sverdlovsk on the special phone. The general haltingly reported that the second parachutist had been found and that unfortunately he was one of ours, Senior Lieutenant Safronov.

What do you mean, one of ours? The marshal barely kept from shouting. How many planes did you shoot down? Cant you tell the difference between ours and theirs?

His transponder wasnt working, lied the general. That lie was repeated many times later, until Igor Mentyukov cleared up the matter: The transponders were operating, but on the code for April, not May. In the preholiday flurry of activities, service personnel had not yet changed it. So not surprisingly, the radars perceived friendly as foe.

Obama has been doing a whole bunch of these "pro-military" moves lately to A) try to win votes and B) present himself as the national defense candidate vs. Romney who he will paint as having no experience.

This is why he is leaking nat'l security info (to show what he's doing behind the scenes...approving drone kills, heading up the Iran cyberterror program, etc.) and why we see stories like the possibility of opening up the Philippines again for the US military.

That never made sense to me. The only time it does, IMO, is in the middle of a shooting war. Trading the Soviet spy for Powers was more than worthwhile, given the risks Powers took for Uncle Sam every time he zipped up his flight suit and the working-over he absorbed at the hands of his Soviet interrogators.

18
posted on 06/09/2012 11:56:26 AM PDT
by Zhang Fei
(Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always.)

Eisenhower had ordered the U-2 flights stopped, to avoid any incident which might imperil his impending trip to the USSR (where he would address the Russian people directly in a speech, among other things).

But the CIA went ahead with the flights anyway.

(Hey, since when did a President have control over the CIA?)

There are even suspicions that the plane was set-up, in order to scuttle the Ike trip.

Exactly! My late husband's squadron flew escort for Powers. He was a crypto man and always carried a capsule in his flight suit. He would have destroyed the code books and swallowed the capsule before letting the Russkies have them. Powers should have done the same, but...........

24
posted on 06/09/2012 12:40:50 PM PDT
by Coldwater Creek
(He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty Psalm 91:)

FGP was much closer to being classified as a spy than a pilot. Granted the U2 was difficult to fly at cruise his real job was to guard the secrets entrusted to him. He failed miserably and gave Dwight a big black eye.

More interesting is to compare Dwight’s behavior when behind the eight ball to our current White House Occupier in his time of trouble. In fact you can’t compare them. Dwight was much more of a man.

An entry in Wikipedia notes that the Vilyam Fisher, the nom de guerre of the KGB agent operating as an illegal (i.e. without diplomatic cover, and thus immunity) who was traded for Powers, was a nonentity that the Soviets nonetheless accepted in exchange for Powers, pretty much for the same reason that we did the trade - for employee morale:

It suited the KGB, for the sake of its own reputation, to portray "Abel's" nine years of being an undetected agent in the U.S., as a triumph by a dedicated NKVD member. The myth of the master spy Rudolf Abel replaced the reality of Fisher's illegal residency. The party hierarchy was well aware that Fisher had achieved nothing of real significance. During his eight years as an illegal resident he appears not to have recruited, or even identified, a single potential agent.

31
posted on 06/09/2012 1:50:15 PM PDT
by Zhang Fei
(Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always.)

His primary job was as a pilot. He was NOT expected to kill himself, never was required, either.

From: Memorandum of Discussion at the 445th Meeting of the National Security Council, Washington, May 24, 1960.
“Secretary Gates asked whether the pilot of the U-2 had been briefed to tell the truth if he were captured. Mr. Dulles said the pilot had been told to reveal whatever he himself knew, including the fact that he worked for CIA.”http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/vx153.asp

FGP acted honorable and with courage given the situation, expectations and circumstances.

FGP was much closer to being classified as a spy than a pilot. Granted the U2 was difficult to fly at cruise his real job was to guard the secrets entrusted to him. He failed miserably and gave Dwight a big black eye.

Given that Americans don't exist to improve the stature of any national equivalent of the Man on a White Horse, it's not clear that this is such a big moral defect on Powers's part. If Ike blamed Powers for not killing himself, then he was asking for something far above and beyond what we asked of combat troops in WWII. Imagine the national furor and the impact on morale if bomber crews over Berlin or Tokyo had been asked to kill themselves to avoid revealing operational secrets in the event of imminent capture.

34
posted on 06/09/2012 2:01:22 PM PDT
by Zhang Fei
(Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always.)

If Ike blamed Powers for not killing himself, then he was asking for something far above and beyond what we asked of combat troops in WWII. Imagine the national furor and the impact on morale if bomber crews over Berlin or Tokyo had been asked to kill themselves to avoid revealing operational secrets in the event of imminent capture.

There were missions requiring not being taken alive in WWII almost certainly, even in the 1980s some GI's knew that suicide or a team mate's assistance was known to be a reality in worse case scenarios.

40
posted on 06/09/2012 2:54:24 PM PDT
by ansel12
(Massachusetts Governors, where the GOP now goes for it's Presidential candidates.)

There were missions requiring not being taken alive in WWII almost certainly, even in the 1980s some GI's knew that suicide or a team mate's assistance was known to be a reality in worse case scenarios.

At the risk of what some of these self-regarding leaders might consider lese majeste, I'll say that I'm pretty skeptical of these kinds of orders, which should really only apply to people above a certain pay grade, who have extremely sensitive information and whose capture might lead to the loss of tens of thousands of lives. I have in mind people like Ike himself.

43
posted on 06/09/2012 4:02:42 PM PDT
by Zhang Fei
(Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always.)

The award for valor is being bestowed on Francis Gary Powers for exhibiting "exceptional loyalty" during harsh interrogation while in captivity by the Soviet Union for nearly two years, the Air Force said.

About the 80’s. . .post-Vietnam the code of conduct was revised to allow you to resist to the best of your ability. . .that is all. Too many guys suffered horribly during Vietnam as they resisted to the point of death or crippling. The US changed the code so that honorable men would not be placed in that situation, to allow them to walk the resistance path but yet, not die and if broken, not be considered a failure. You were trained to resist until you could resist no more.

Even in the 1980s there were units that felt that some missions might call for it, for instance certain deep penetration LRS operations during the Cold War could call for it if the mission was important enough, such as a last ditch eyes on mission to determine if NATO needed to go nuclear.

It was a constant subject of discussion of what to do with a team member if he couldn’t be left behind alive and the mission had to be completed regardless of the cost.

Another constant subject of the two that dominated discussions in units like that, is what do you do if a cute little East German child stumbles across your team and the mission is just beginning, and must be completed (which is normally the case if you are already 300 miles inside the Soviet Union knowing that the GRU and KGB has hunter/killer teams that look for people like you and Army command or even the President is waiting for your information).

Exposure kills the mission and the team, a team member being taken alive kills the mission and the team because he will be turned over to professionals who need the information he has to immediately kill the team and their mission, it probably wouldn’t be a long term imprisonment that he is facing, but a concentrated effort of interrogation focused on information of immediate need and urgency, it is doubtful that POW rules would apply in such a case.

47
posted on 06/09/2012 4:32:19 PM PDT
by ansel12
(Massachusetts Governors, where the GOP now goes for it's Presidential candidates.)

“You arent supposed to slit the throats of men who you capture alive, but some missions still call for such things.”

Actually, according to LOAC and our western moral code, that is not allowed and therefore not called for.

Bravo 20, the British Special Forces unit in Iraq in 1991, was compromised (discovered) by a child and was faced with such a situation. They chose the moral and right thing to do and did not murder the child that discovered them.

Murder is not killing in war. Soldiers kill all the time—it is what they are supposed to do. Murder is the unlawful taking of a life—and slitting the throat of a captured enemy is such an act.

There are complex and difficult situations that muddy the waters terribly and this means each situation must be taken on its own merits and weighed in accordance with Just War. Things such as double-effect, proportionality and strategic devastation all wander into this challenging area.

If you slit the throat (murder) the prisoner you are committing murder. That is undisputed.

What separates us from the murdering pig-scat dwelling muslimes from our Christian and moral way of war is the fact we do not murder and we do not deliberately inflict suffering upon the innocent (balanced by the aforementioned caveats listed above).

Muslimes make the suffering of the innocent the primary aim of their evil.

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